Spanish Grand Prix: Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton take second free practice session

By:  S. Harding,  Xiro Xone News  May 12, 2017  Updated:  11:32 PM 

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Photo: Mercedes AMG Petronas
BARCELONA, Spain -- Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton topped the second free practice session for the Spanish Grand Prix as the "Jedi Knight" of F1 was 0.090s ahead of teammate Valtteri Bottas.

"It was massively challenging but still fun nonetheless. The team has done an amazing job with the upgrades and the car is working just as we expected. It’s been a much better start to the weekend for me than in Sochi, so I’m very happy," Hamilton said. 

Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen finished third and was 0.220s behind Valtteri Bottas, with his teammate Sebastian Vettel in fourth. Vettel showed a strong sector two but was still 0.281s slower than Hamilton in sector three.

 “I wasn’t totally happy as I think a lot was left in the track and I didn’t find it at the end. At the same time I feel the car is quick so I just need to get it right. Overall, the atmosphere is good, but obviously now I am more focused on what happened today," Vettel said. 

Red Bull, who is hoping to make some big strides this weekend, saw Max Verstappen's finish the session fifth after he took a slight detour into the gravel at Turn 9. Verstappen's teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, finished sixth but was over half a second off pace.

Seventh went to Renault's Nico Hulkenberg who was 0.8s from the front while teammate Jolyon Palmer ended the day eighth. Williams' Felipe Massa finished ninth with Toro Rosso's Carlos Sainz in tenth.

"The medium and the hard tyres were quite tricky to run, and we did struggle with them a bit, especially with overheating. But, many others were struggling to make these tyres work too, so it’s not so bad," Massa said. 

Haas' Romain Grosjean took 11th but was only about a tenth off from Sainz in the top ten. Force India's Esteban Ocon finished 12th.

McLaren-Honda driver Stoffel Vandoorne was 13th with Ocon's Force India teammate Sergio Perez in 14th ahead of Kevin Magnussen in 15th for Haas. Marcus Ericsson ended the day 16th for Sauber with F1 rookie Lance Stroll in 17th.

Daniil Kvyat finished 18th for Toro Rosso while Sauber driver Pascal Wehrlein wrapped up FP2 in 19th.

The other McLaren of Fernando Alonso managed to return for the afternoon session after his Honda engine failed during the morning's first practice session which resulted in a power unit change. He was able to complete 21 laps, finishing 20th.

“The poor show in the afternoon session was due to the fact that first of all, you need to calibrate the engine when you put in a new power unit, so in the first couple of runs the power was a little bit inconsistent. We ran out of time, so we put on a new set of tyres even though not everything was calibrated. Towards the end of the session, when we put in more fuel and we were running in similar conditions to everyone else, we were doing more or less the lap time we were expecting, close to our main competitors for the race," said Alonso. 
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